1. Field of Disclosed Subject Matter
This disclosure relates to systems and methods for combining a space floor plan map indicating positions of existing output devices with automatically-collected user affinity data for each of the existing output devices to confirm, review and/or update a placement plan for the existing output devices and for any output devices that may be added in a workspace environment in which the output devices are operated.
2. Related Art
Many vendors, and service and system providers, undertake efforts to aid customers in optimizing work flows in modern office environments. These optimization efforts require analysis of a number of variables and individual characteristics of the office workspace environment, which will be referred to generically in this disclosure as an “operating environment.” Individual user workstations associated with individual users are placed according to a certain prescribed scheme. Separately, common use devices, such as all manner of output devices including output image forming devices, are networked to a plurality of the individual user workstations for use. Because these common use devices are accessed by some number of users, these devices should be optimally placed for appropriately easy access by those users. Placement of the common use devices should be intelligently undertaken in a manner that balances use of the common use devices and accounts for convenient access by the plurality of users that are intended to employ one or more particular common use devices.
Managed service providers that provide the common use devices are among the vendors that often offer basic floor plan mapping applications for placement of the common use devices under their management. Building floor plans are often imported from myriad sources and are consulted to assess an overall building layout and to choose a “best guess” for at least the initial placement of the common use devices accounting for a basic level of access to the devices such as, for example, avoidance of physical obstructions. These efforts may attempt to account for “planned” use by the plurality of users deployed in the operating environment. The conventional process of basic floor plan mapping tends to be time consuming and subjective, and relies on a great deal of human interaction to understand a relationships between, for example, (1) the existing common use devices deployed in the operating environment and (2) the users working in the operating environment. This process, by its very nature, tends to be error prone causing a large percentage of initial layout schemes, whether provided by vendors or performed by customers using vendor tools, in the managed service space to need to undergo significant revision soon after initial device deployment.
Previous work has been directed at adding a level of analysis to the efforts by defining zones within the operating environment. This process groups users, and uses, of common use devices according to a first level analysis including an analysis of uses for certain zones within an operating environment and a density of a user population associated with each zone. This first level analysis removes some of the difficulties incumbent in the purely manual efforts. The first level analysis tends to make the initial deployment of the common use devices more robust. The efforts that include this first level analysis remain fairly rigid, however, and difficult to update. Under these types of schemes, common use devices are often placed within the operating environment and statically left in place according to the initially analyzed deployment regardless of changes in operations or user configurations within the operating environment. These basic operations are valuable in accounting for operating conditions as they exist at a particular point in time, but provide little ability by which to confirm or update optimal positioning of common use devices within defined zones, or between zones, as an overall laydown of the operating zones may change with changes in operating conditions and other factors.
Also, without detailed review and human intervention, often requiring the aid of a building manager or other individual that is tasked with aiding in the optimizing of the human engineering incumbent in the space design, it is difficult to account for all of the conditions of the operating environment that may affect use, and therefore placement, of particular common use devices within particular zones. For example, take a case where a zone may be designated as a semi-secure or secure area that is accessible by only a limited number of users. Such a designation of a particular zone may not be readily apparent simply by reviewing a floor plan map. Such a secure area, for example, may need to be defined as its own zone in order that devices may be optimally placed for use by only those individuals who may access that zone.